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“What are we looking at, time-wise?” I ask.
Three hours until full collapse, maybe two and a half before irreversible abstraction, and— For a moment, it pauses, but not as if it's nervous. It pauses in a way that punctuates its next statement. Two before you need to terminate my kernel.
Lightning shoots up my spine. “I'm not doing that.”
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They are boarding now, as I stand some kind of guard before the door. The last of them climbs up into the vessel, and the counter that is consuming my mind ticks up. Eighty-seven. Eighty-nine.
Then I hear something new. Not only new words, but a new tone, a new feeling in the feed. This message is only to me.
«You got them out,» it says.
And then, «Your work is acknowledged.»
I want to cry. I want to rip something apart with my teeth – I want to scream loud enough to bring the habitat down. I want to cry. But I can't.
So instead I tap it back in the feed. «Negative. Your work is acknowledged.»
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This new SecUnit Murderbot's picked up has an attitude.
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At the start of their survey, PreservationAux watches as their SecUnit is unpacked from its crate. Immediately, the team decides that it is Friend Shaped, and they're going to show it the Respect and Kindness it deserves.
(Mild AU of All Systems Red where the gang decides to try and befriend their SecUnit as soon as they land, before any lives are in danger. Whether it likes it or not. Got Loved Idiot. Primarily Mensah POV)
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It was a beautiful day on the survey planet and Dr. Mensah was a jacked survey team leader and planetary admin.
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The most important relationships in ART's life are with the humans who raised it, and for whom it is now both home and friend. But ART lives almost entirely in the feed, where it is imperceptible to the humans unless it makes an active effort to be perceived. Struggling to be seen and understood, and to understand the humans who are its whole world, it turns to the thing it knows best: research.
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(I had a bit of a moment there, but I think I deserved it. The governor module, as ever, disagreed and its warning zap had me reviewing the last few seconds of video to formulate a reply before the pain set in.)
“This unit has never been designated ‘Rin’ in the past, but will now answer to that as per client request.”
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- Words:
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- 3
- Bookmarks:
- 43
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- Words:
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Overclocked, overworked, over and over by Phantomxlegend
Fandoms: The Murderbot Diaries - Martha Wells
29 Dec 2025
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SecUnit watched as Iris’ flashlight beam cut in front of it through the darkened hallway, nothing more than emergency lights illuminating their path. It walked in front, its boots crunching against broken pieces of artificial stone and other debris, faint markings on the ground barely guiding their path through the abandoned mining installation.
Parts of SecUnit’s organics quivered in unease at the familiarity of the place, glimpses of neural memory threatening to push up into the front of its mind. It shoved them back as far as it possibly could. Its performance reliability dropped by a small margin, but it ignored it.
Most corporate mining installations looked the same on the surface, that was all. They had the same above-ground habitats and construction that were made out of the cheapest materials from the lowest bidder. It was all the same.
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Investigating an abandoned mining installation goes wrong and Murderbot gets nearly electrocuted
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Hold the Skies Together by FascinatedFinch, ramshackle_fey
Fandom The Murderbot Diaries - Martha Wells
01 Jan 2026
Summary
As SBtS started growing out of control and spawning sequels, it also started poking roots into my other writing.
All the fic in here are canon within SBtS, and I have more stuff planned to come out both concurrent with and before the events of SBtS.
The shorts are individually sorted by when they occur, but they're all tacked on at the end of the series. When I drop any that are concurrent with SBtS, or when one of the pre-SBtS events is directly brought up, there'll be a link to it in the chapter notes where it fits.
The shorts also all work as standalones without any other knowledge of the series. Though, especially if you're the kind of reader who likes combing for clues about future plot events, you might figure one or two things out early.
We've also added a work here just for all of Finch's gorgeous illustrations, so you can look through those by chapter, and see her character design sheets and concept sketches!
- Words:
- 20,195
- Works:
- 4
- Bookmarks:
- 10
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Summary
Systems restart
Suddenly it was coming back online. And it was somewhere else. Not where they were supposed to be.
Murderbot disappears.
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Chance of a Successful Retrieval by Brushtail
Fandoms: The Murderbot Diaries - Martha Wells
26 Dec 2025
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When a terraforming inspection team from The Divarti Cluster is cut off from rescue by a deadly storm, they think the one team member from Preservation is foolish to expect a rescue. Dr. Ratthi knows that his friends will come get them no matter how bad the odds seem.
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In an effort to improve security training for its humans, Murderbot decides that controlled memory wipes are the only way to give the authentic 'chased by a dangerous SecUnit' experience. It really wishes its humans would stop complaining about the idea. It knows what it's doing, alright? This isn't a serial ruled by dramatic irony. Nothing's going to go wrong.
(Something, inevitably, goes wrong.)
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Let’s start with the good part.
I accidentally helped Three (who was also helped by Ratthi and Bharadwaj) invent trauma recovery modules for murderbots. ART unhelped at first, but then it helped. I keep saying help too much but I’m not fucking changing it again, it’s been two hours. Anyways.
The bad part is everything else that had to happen first. Sane people shouldn’t get anywhere near a SecUnit’s worst memories, which is what we did so you don’t have to. Though I guess if you need the modules, you do have to. That’s kind of the point.Well, don’t worry about all the atrocities. There’s no way yours can be worse than mine.
—youCANskipthispart/doc/TrauModOrigins.file
Bookmarked by lovinglylightbulbs
16 Dec 2025
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Show me how you want it to be by laxlyricism
Fandoms: The Murderbot Diaries - Martha Wells
07 Sep 2025
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Perihelion has been working on this plan for longer than it would ever be willing to admit. It's had the drone finished for months, waiting for the right moment to deploy it. (It definitely hasn't just been chickening out and avoiding the conversation. That would be foolish). But now the plan has worked exactly as it was designed to do, and it's not ready. Maybe it will never be ready. But its SecUnit is holding its drone's hand so gently, and has just asked it
ART, are you in love with me?
It's too late to back out now.
Yes
Fear is an autonomic process.
Series
- Part 2 of Fight or Flight
- Part 4 of The Fight or Flight Cinematic Universe
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SecUnit finds itself in charge of one of Dr. Mensah's children, and on the run. Luckily, it's good at its job. Unluckily, it has to hang out with a human adolescent. (It can handle the people trying to kill it. It's the babysitting thing that's terrifying.)
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The whole thing took 3.7 minutes. It was impersonal, efficient, and streamlined, just the way the corporates liked it. Oh, and the new construct was screaming the whole time.
Bharadwaj is sent a packet of video files from the Corporation Rim as part of her research for her documentary. When viewing one clip in particular, SecUnit's human friends learn something new about the lives of constructs.
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The pings were all from Overse’s interface and routed from a transit ring called Trans-All, the kind of ping that was just are you in range – are you in range – are you in range. It was a call for help and it fucking terrified me, because I was answering it way, way too late.
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Ratthi goes missing. Pin-Lee isn't used to losing. Murderbot isn't used to having anything to lose.
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NULLverse: The Bot-Construct Disaster Squad by FlipSpring
Fandom The Murderbot Diaries - Martha Wells
18 Dec 2025
Summary
With Networks VOID/Networks VITAL, NULLverse is narratively Complete. But I keep writing anyway. Cuz it's fun.
Consider this series if you like: feral shit, disaster, continuity of identity+memory, societies of people with divergent needs/wants, chaos, robot creation ethics, violence vs security, suffering, healing, bad puns.
Canon Divergence AU:
- At the end of Exit Strategy, the Combat SecUnit succeeds at capturing Murderbot
- Murderbot is subjected to Palisade's construct research lab
- The Combat SecUnit is A (Problematic) Character
- Disaster ensuesSeries has its ups and downs regarding angst, dark comedy, and trauma recovery themes. Plus some whack worldbuilding speculation. We like to multi track drift here. It’s crack it’s angst it’s fluff? We have the RangeTM
Some installments are skippable if u so prefer. Reading order is suggested but not strictly necessary if u are a flexible type. Mix and match if you want. Go crazy. I know I am.
Hope you have fun!
- Words:
- 434,797
- Works:
- 19
- Bookmarks:
- 373
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Summary
It is with great relief that I exit the wormhole into the home space of the Pan System Alliance. Familiar neutrinos brush against my hull, lighting up my sensor array in a comforting way. I immediately receive three pings from members of my cohort who are in range. I return the pings merely to be polite, but ignore any further initiation of conversation. I am really not in the mood to be interrogated about my recent mishap.
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Directly after the events on System Collapse ART must enter drydock on a PSUMNT space port in order to receive necessary maintenance on its engines...Then a few more things happen.
Series
- Part 8 of Carrier Signal